


Death with a Smile

by Lyssandra_Med



Series: One-Shot [50]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Muggle, Angst with a Happy Ending, Death, F/F, Mortuaries, funeral homes, graveyards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:41:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23863219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyssandra_Med/pseuds/Lyssandra_Med
Summary: Hermione first sees Death when she is young.Bellatrix had known Death for all her life.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Bellatrix Black Lestrange
Series: One-Shot [50]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1429282
Comments: 2
Kudos: 67





	Death with a Smile

**Author's Note:**

> Rewritten but not edited/revised past that.

It is a blinding pain.

It is a monumental pressure that sits against her eyes and the sudden crack- _ crack- _ **_crack_ ** of her heart. It is the tremor that winds its way through her hands before travelling up her wrist to form a growing crescendo that leaves her open-mouthed and panting.

It is the acrid taste of incense that blankets the air and a slowly dripping curiosity that grows stronger with every second. It is her Grandmother in a coffin with hands placed gently atop her chest and a face that is just as bright and cheerful as Hermione can ever remember.

But  _ it _ is none of those things. It is an imposter, a mannequin that has been dressed up to hide the rot that lingers beneath the surface.

It is a young woman that stands silent against the back of the room with hands clasped against her front and face downturned. It is black curls like a halo, a perfect frame to a perfect face. She  _ knows _ that the woman is beautiful.

But she also knows that the moment the woman saw her she began to cry, and now everyone is crying and nothing much makes any sense. 

She cannot remember all of it. Too much for one too young, too unprepared.

It is her very first encounter with Death, and she is frightened and intrigued in equal measure.

\---

Her second encounter is a freewheeling tumble of stitched together skin and a broken limb. It is all the pain that accompanies that healing. It is the memory of pulling her mother from the wreckage and wondering why her father wasn’t moving anymore.

Wasn’t breathing. 

Wasn’t reassuring them that all would be right, be good, be safe and secure. That there would be a tomorrow for them all.

He wasn’t there when she woke up. He wasn’t there the next day or the ones that followed.

And now he was on a slab.

The heavy pressure of her mother leaning against her arm isn’t so much of a debilitating weight as it is debilitating for the  _ reason _ that it is there. They are both now alone and she  _ knows  _ that. She knows that  _ she _ is the one who will need to find some semblance of her father’s courage, something that will let her carry on.

Family has left her. Family needs her. 

This is why they interact.

A simple conversation of what he should be wearing when he is delivered back to the ground. What would look best, be seen as best, please the most attendees. A conversation most banal and annoying.

But the woman’s voice is lovely and deep, a husk of darkness that wavers underneath her tone and lingers in Hermione’s ears. It is the simple comfort of a hand upon her shoulder, an apology for something she could never control. 

Hermione drinks it in. Basks beneath it, parched and dry from her ordeal.

_ ‘This might be selfish,’ _ she thinks.  _ ‘This  _ **_is_ ** _ selfish.’ _

Selfish or not she covets this little interaction.

The woman is older than the last time that Hermione saw her but she is no less striking for her age. She is beautiful, mature and letting in the faintest little streak of grey into her hair. It stands out quite starkly against the youth of her features but Hermione likes it.

She is struck by this woman and her beauty. She is struck by it even as she tries to mute the hurt of her loss.

She will be selfish this time. She will remember this kind face, the kind words. She will remember it long after they have left and her father is lowered deep into the ground. She will be selfish and remember the words exchanged. She will try, as much as she can, to hold onto all of it.

\---

The next encounter is at once the least painful and still somehow the worst.

Three years had managed to pass Hermione by with all the rapidity of a speeding train. Here one moment, gone the next, a blip in the timeline of her life. All the sound of those years, all the pressures she had lived under, the painfully tense feeling of movement.

All gone. Her mother too, though she still visits on days when her mind seems well.

But now she was here again and hurting all the more for it.

Harry had been tired the last time she had seen him. He had tried as much as anyone knew how to remain present and constant amid their little group of friends. He was everywhere that someone would want him. He would drop plans at a moment’s notice to help them out and be there for someone in need.

And then he was gone. 

Dropped dead one day while tying his shoes and explaining to Ronald that if he didn’t ask that girl out soon then he would give it a try. It was unexpected. Unwarranted.

Harry had been healthy. His demise was so peculiar that all the doctors who looked at his case had been left puzzled and clueless. Harry had been healthy, if tired, and then he had just been gone.

Their little circle of friends had shattered in an instant, none of them having realized that  _ he _ was what kept them all together. All the bonds they had laid were torn asunder by his passing and try as Hermione might she just couldn’t bridge that gap.

Harry’s family had gone ahead to lay him to rest within as quick a timeframe as they could. They kept the service quiet and demur. A sombre and oddly fitting end to his time on earth. The funeral itself went off as well as could be expected. She was much too numb at the brevity of it all to keep herself truly  _ present _ for the moment. She comforted Lily with an automatic sort of kindness that left her feeling stiff. She hugged James and felt his warmth but cringed away at how quickly it fled.

She accepted a handshake from his godfather and wondered -  _ again _ \- just why this had to happen.

The woman was there when all was finally said and done. She waited against the back corner of the cemetery until everyone seemed pleased and watched them filter off with mournful eyes.

Hermione approached her more so out of curiosity than any particular reason that she could name. Something small and heavy had invaded her thoughts with mindless loops that said,  _ ‘Why not? Just do it.’ _

After all, why shouldn’t she?

If she found herself turned away and rebuffed, fine. She could handle that. She had already handled so much, already lost so much that she had coveted. If she were told to piss off then at least she could get this over with quickly.

The woman smiled as Hermione approached.

\---

Bellatrix was wild beyond belief. Hermione called it on their first date, confirmed it on their second, and cemented herself as accepting of it on their third.

Bellatrix was wild in her manners, wild in the tales she told, wild in how she could stare at Hermione with so much fervent energy while she mutely regaled her with information on her job. A job that Hermione quickly found out had not been her first choice but one that was foisted upon her in the end.

Bellatrix Lyra Black, one of three sisters and the only one still left in town. The other two had departed long ago and chosen husbands and professions that kept them far away. But not Bellatrix. She had prided her name far too much to let it fall away, and had fought against her own desires by remaining in this podunk town as the apprentice to the local mortician. 

Thomas Riddle had trained her, let her apprentice beneath his watchful eye. Bellatrix told her of how the man had been obsessed with Death, willing to pass along his knowledge but far more eager to understand it than she was.

Bellatrix had taken great pains to explain to Hermione how odd the whole situation had felt to her. Her parents had owned the funeral home but Tom had operated it all his life, and when he decided to turn out for greener pastures she had been left as the only one capable of taking care of the town’s dead.

Her parents didn’t understand his sudden disappearance. Didn’t know the business except that their name was on the cemetery gates and it brought them a sizable penny. They tried to hire an outsider to take over but a series of scandals involving a lover and a dead girl had ended that.

Scandal took over. No one wanted to come and run the blasted place. No one, that was, until Bellatrix stepped up to fill Tom’s shoes. She had, after all, received all her training from him and nearly finished what certificates and tests she needed to complete the legal side. Besides that she had been young and driven to protect her family name. They were old blood, old and powerful and persons to be respected.

Hermione didn’t quite understand it. She thought she might have understood it better if her parents had remained whole past her adolescence. Dentists and morticians were quite different but Hermione thought she might have understood the desire to keep her name pristine. 

Maybe things would have been better.

But they hadn’t. They had never recovered and now she was sitting in coffee shops and reading on a park bench. She was walking home on late evenings with an older woman on her arm and giving voice to words that flowed between them as if they had known one another all their lives.

\---

One year. Three. A few more or a few less. It didn’t matter in the end. What mattered instead was how much Hermione learned about Bellatrix, how much she learned about the Black family and the rather lucrative business of Death.

She was well and truly lovestruck. That fact was one that she would admit freely and in great spirits, smiling and laughing whenever her remaining friends pointed out the change in her demeanour. She  _ was _ quite happy. She  _ did _ feel bright. Bellatrix and her work were a darkened thing that many others would never profess to love. 

Hermione screamed it from the roof one night, drunk on love and wine that had been kept cold in a room not three paces from resting bodies.

Bellatrix loved her work. Loved it even as she moaned and groaned. Loved it even when it was hard and unwanted. Loved it with all her heart and smiled when she said it. 

Loved Hermione just as much.

_ ‘It makes me happy,’ _ she had professed one morning, Hermione’s question in the air and her eyes occupied with looking out their little kitchen window. Her hands were curled up on the countertop and the black length of her hair had been pulled up into something that resembled a nest of snakes, a perfect visage if Hermione were asked.

When the woman had been prodded for  _ why _ it made her so happy she had turned around, leaned hard into the countertop, and screwed up her face in as contemplative a look as Hermione had ever seen. Hermione wondered idly if anyone had ever asked this of her before. If anyone at all had thought to ask the eligible bachelorette why she smiled as she wandered the darkened grounds.

Bellatrix had taken a moment before looking her in the eyes and dropping her voice to a husky whisper,  _ ‘Because it helps people, I suppose. Or rather; that’s the normal reason. Besides that? It’s calming for me. I work with Death. It helps temper my own fears, I suppose.’ _

It was a somewhat cryptic answer and Hermione wasn’t quite sure that she believed that was all there was. Bellatrix’s decision to support the family had been layered and she suspected this one to be the same. But she didn’t pry into it, didn’t tear apart her answer and look for more. 

There wasn’t any need. 

Bellatrix was happy.  _ She _ was happy. 

She learned Bellatrix’s trade and found that it too made her happy.

\---

That happiness managed to follow them both. 

Soon enough there was a ring upon her finger and a name tacked onto her own. There was a moment spent with friends and family that bundled them in praise. Cheers rang against their ears and the night that Bellatrix asked was etched into her memory. It was nothing at all like Hermione would have imagined when she was younger.

But she would take this reality over her fantasy any day of the week.

The mortuary was closed for one week. One week that they both plucked from busy schedules, one week pledged to themselves and no one else. A trip that filled them with joy then and for many months after.

Hermione was happy. Bellatrix was happy.

But Bellatrix coughed one night, a startling noise that coloured her handkerchief red.

The doctors weren’t happy.

\---

Narcissa wasn’t anywhere near happy but she knew that she wasn’t the only one. Her older sister -  _ Bellatrix in all but her temperament and her hair and her personality and her opinion and her soul _ \- wasn’t happy. She was crying in an ugly fashion, broken and reeling.

Andromeda  _ never  _ cried.

Narcissa hadn’t seen her cry since the night she left their home and ran off to a new life with Theodore. She hadn’t seen Andromeda cry when they stood over their parent’s graves. Hadn’t seen her cry in the intervening years. Hadn’t thought the woman  _ could _ cry.

But she could remember Andromeda crying when she stepped from their foyer and off to a different world. She could remember Bellatrix’s harsh tone, the clear disapproval. She could remember just how much her eldest sister had wanted to keep the family in good standing. 

But Andromeda hadn’t. She had wanted to run off for something  _ she _ wanted.

Narcissa couldn’t blame her. She had done the same after all, and she would do it all again. She forgave her older sister. Forgave what bad blood had remained between them. 

But Bellatrix hadn’t. 

Bellatrix hadn’t had a chance to hear it from them both, even when she married the woman of her dreams. They had been there but not spoken on the subject, shoved it off to some corner of their minds and pretended it had never happened.

Now they would never have that chance. That forgiveness. That closure.

Narcissa found it fitting that she be left with this pain. She had, in her own mind, deserved it. She had, against the wishes of her husband, decided that this suffering was hers.

But it wasn’t. She was not alone in it, and the week of preparation proved that. Bellatrix’s widow stood deep within the bowels of their childhood home and stood vigil before a pale-cream corpse. Bellatrix’s widow took no solace in their accompaniment and seemed to -  _ if anything _ \- have become more despondent when she noticed all their differing similarities.

She broke out the bottle of gin that her father had given her a nip from on her thirteenth birthday. It was in the same place as before, hidden in a depression that had been hollowed out behind his portrait in the study. It wasn’t even half-past seven before she had scooped up her despondent sister from the sofa and dragged her down into the perpetually too still mortuary.

They crashed upon Hermione with all the brutal force of a hurricane making landfall, draped the sleepless woman across a chair and passed her a glass that had been filled to the brim.

The reminiscing went on for hours. They never did get used to the smell or the taste but it had weaned off enough for Narcissa to barely pay any attention to the words spilling from her mouth. Laughter bubbled up Hermione’s throat the longer they went on, tears of joy leaked down her sister’s face.

She felt what remained of her eldest sister, her memory or her spirit. Felt something that had been cooped up here, something that had leached from her as the years had passed. Something that had been building since she had begun training, building since she began training a girl-who-would-be-wife.

She felt it, and she smiled.

\---

They were all content with drinking and talking well into the morning. With a final pull from the bottle she had hauled Andromeda up to the sofa in the main room, shoved Hermione into an armchair, and chose the floor for herself. She scratched idly at the antique carpeting beneath her body and forced herself to remember. Forced herself to recall all their adolescent words, all their fights and joyous revelry. Fanned her hand atop the threads and reviewed every tear that had been spilt and every word any of them had uttered in anger.

She remembered the tears that had fallen in joy. She remembered Bella’s high emotions when she revealed that she was engaged. She remembered Lucius and how he had somehow managed to make Bella nearly split with laughter. She remembered late nights where fear and doubt had plagued their minds. Remembered being recovered, mended by holding onto one another in the still and quiet of the night.

She would remember this. 

She would remember Bellatrix.

\---

When all the guests had finally left and the earth had been padded down, Hermione wept.

She settled herself as gracefully as she could before the freshly turned earth and screwed her eyes shut tight. Dug her fingers into the grass and fought with all her heart to keep up some modicum of composure. 

_ It wasn’t fair, _ she wept.  _ It’s just not. _

She lay there for a time as the wind picked up and a chill began to invade her bones. The sun ticked on above her, ruthless in its advance and bringing her no warmth. The crows and ravens that had been Bellatrix’s unexpected friends were standing sentinel in a grove of trees.

Their lonely chorus of caws was the only sound to accompany Hermione’s suffering.

She wasn’t quite sure how long she remained there. She wasn’t even sure when it was that she managed to come back to herself. She knew it was sudden, abrupt, halting and cold. 

One moment she had been reminiscing about better times and the next her vision had been perked by something out of the corner of her eye. Something that moved, something that lifted her vision until she could eye someone in a skirt at the far end of the cemetery. 

Her heart clenched as she moved, shut tightly even as she turned mechanical and stiff. She rose on uneasy feet and turned to rightly view the unexpected visitor. 

A young woman standing at the farthest reaches of the cemetery. Hands clasped tightly and face downturned to the ground, her black curls a halo that framed a hidden face. Hermione knows within a second that this woman is beautiful but here where she is crying she cannot voice it. Nothing much makes sense to her anymore, and she cannot truly believe her eyes.

And then the visitor is gone, and she feels something pass over.

\---

Bleary eyes that open on a pristine room. Softness piled behind her, underneath her. Warmth atop her chest and crafted from her favoured quilts, an afghan that Bellatrix had purchased on their honeymoon, and a pile of loose sweaters and undershirts that Bellatrix had always sworn she would put away.

_ ‘Sometime later, Pet.’ _

The scent of her favourite tea lingers in the air and assaults every inhale. It wakes her, wakes something deep beneath her breast. Something powerful, something that speaks of  _ home, _ something that speaks to everything being right and good.

She had thrown that tea out decades ago. All those clothes were folded neatly into boxes that occupied a little spot within her closet. She would open those boxes from time to time and press the fabric against her face while telling herself that it all still smelled of Bellatrix.

She would tell herself that everything was good and right.

She would tell herself that the coughing had never started, that even if her bones hurt all she needed to do was turn around and wander the house. All she needed to do was head downstairs and she would find her love engrossed in her work. She would hear tender words as Bellatrix puttered around the space, her voice asking questions of the dead and giving them all honest answers.

Reassurances.

Guidance.

_ ‘It’s about time,’ _ a voice started, patient and heavy, tinged with just the faintest bit of an accent that Hermione had never been able to make sense of.

Hermione turned at a glacial pace to face the speaker. She stretched her limbs and pushed herself upright.

No arthritis nagging at her joints. No lancing pain in her hip, no constant reminder that she was  _ old _ and no reminder that old things fall apart.

There was no pain in her heat.

She reached out to grasp the proffered hand, noted the slip of white skin and nails painted black. Felt the warm skin touch her own. Saw the comforting beauty that came from fingers that slotted so well into her own that they might as well have been a perfect key for a perfect lock.

She rose, and left.

She left, and followed the woman from all those years ago.


End file.
